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leilaessai.bsky.social
Leila Essa
@leilaessai.bsky.social
580 followers 280 following 410 posts
assistant professor of comparative literature at utrecht uni. projects on post-partition lit & authorial politics. current research and writing at https://intervention.sites.uu.nl/. she/her.
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leilaessai.bsky.social
Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · Jul 10
a quick research blog update with lovely book news and much gratitude for anna bernard's solidarity talk at utrecht last month and for the "for now" conference organisers in berlin last week

intervention.sites.uu.nl/2025/07/10/f...
For now
The book that I mentioned in my last post is taking shape: Marta Cenedese and I have just signed a contract with Bloomsbury Academic for our edited volume Activist Writing / Activist Reading. We are v...
intervention.sites.uu.nl
Reposted by Leila Essa
annakornbluh.bsky.social
"the heist film offers audiences a spectacle of highly choreographed expertise. From Rififi to Sneakers to Soderbergh canon (Out of Sight Logan Lucky Oceans 11–13), the genre has generated some of cinema’s most powerful allegories of collective action"

homework: read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlant...
November 11, 2025 at 2:16 PM
leilaessai.bsky.social
after the music festival is before the mini poetry festival
miayou.bsky.social Mia You @miayou.bsky.social · 10d
If you’re around Utrecht on 11 November, Biswamit Dwibedy will be in town!
November 10, 2025 at 7:33 AM
leilaessai.bsky.social
Devendra Banhart at Le Guess Who tomight
November 8, 2025 at 9:57 PM
leilaessai.bsky.social
i bought expensive plums in the Steiner-y organic veg shop and they taste of NOTHING, confirming my suspicions and antipathy
leilaessai.bsky.social Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · Aug 27
From renting a flat to making a doctor’s appointment to drinking a glass of wine, no escape from anthroposophy in this country. Sir, this is a Wendy’s
November 7, 2025 at 10:11 AM
leilaessai.bsky.social
no surprises here: a Berlin court has confirmed that the "political activity ban" on Ghassan Abu-Sittah 1,5years ago was against the law – I remember being on a train to Berlin when those news broke; infuriating like almost every encounter with the city in the last two years
isaliba.bsky.social Dr. Ilyas Saliba @isaliba.bsky.social · 4d
Laut Urteil hätte die Ausländerbehörde dem Chirurgen Ghassan Abu-Sittah die Einreise nicht verbieten dürfen.

Wie zu Erwarten stellt das OVG Urteil eine Verletzung der Meinungsfreiheit- und Versammlungsfreiheit fest.
Wird dafür jemand zur Verantwortung gezogen @kaiwegner.bsky.social?
Auftritts-Verbot bei "Palästina-Kongress" in Berlin war rechtswidrig
www.rbb24.de
November 7, 2025 at 9:52 AM
leilaessai.bsky.social
day 2 curls ready for festival day 2 (sorry, I don’t have insta anymore)
morning sun selfie
November 7, 2025 at 9:01 AM
Reposted by Leila Essa
miayou.bsky.social
If you’re around Utrecht on 11 November, Biswamit Dwibedy will be in town!
November 1, 2025 at 1:39 PM
leilaessai.bsky.social
Just learned that the interviewer here is the wonderful Bhakti Shringarpure of @radicalbooks.bsky.social, full interview here www.warscapes.com/conversation...
November 6, 2025 at 1:52 PM
Reposted by Leila Essa
leilaessai.bsky.social
Quick new blog post on the work on the Kurt-Tucholsky-Preis, for which you can also read Maryam Aras' acceptance speech now - see next post! intervention.sites.uu.nl/2025/11/04/r... (1/3)
Rewarding political writing
I count myself very lucky that my time on this research project coincides with my appointment as a judge for the Kurt-Tucholsky-Preis for politically engaged writing in small forms – one of Germany's ...
intervention.sites.uu.nl
November 4, 2025 at 9:44 AM
Reposted by Leila Essa
leilaessai.bsky.social
prepping my first lecture for the Migration and Diaspora course next week and honestly cannot wait to teach my new syllabus
Weekly Overview 2025/26 All mandatory set reading is available in the course reader (except for the novel in Week 6). All optional recommended reading is available via the UU library or linked below. Week 1: Introduction Lecture Wednesday 12 November Seminars Friday 14 November Set Academic Reading: - Sara Ahmed, ‘Home and Away: Narratives of Migration and Estrangement’ (1999) - Anne Potjans, Anja Sunhyun Michaelsen, Elahe Haschemi Yekani, Thao Ho and Fenja Akinde-Hummel (research group Tales of the Diasporic Ordinary), ‘A Conversation on Diaspora’ (2024) Recommended Reading: - Paul Gilroy, ‘Diaspora’, Paragraph 17 (1994): 207-212 - Michel Bruneau, ‘Diasporas, transnational spaces and communities’ in Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories and Methods, ed. by Rainer Bauböck and Thomas Faist (Amsterdam University Press, 2010), pp. 35-49 Week 2: Short Stories of Displacement (1950s-1980s) Lecture Wednesday 19 November Seminars Friday 21 November Set Literary Reading: - Saadat Hasan Manto, ‘Toba Tek Singh’ (first published in 1955, translated from Urdu) - Samira Azzam, ‘Another Year’ (first published around the 1950s or 60s, translated from Arabic) - Isaac Bashevis Singer, ‘The Letter Writer’ (first published in 1968, translated from Yiddish) - Ntozake Shange, ‘aw, babee, you so pretty’ (first published around the 1970s or 80s) Recommended Reading: - Leslie A. Flemming, ‘Riots and Refugees: The Post-Partiton Stories of Saadat Hasan Manto’, Journal of South Asian Literature, 13 (1977): 99–109 - Yasir Suleiman, ‘Palestine and the Palestinians in the Short Stories of Samira Azzam’, Journal of Arabic Literature, 22 (1991): 154-165 - Leonard Kriegel, ‘This World and That Shtetl: The Short Fiction of Isaac Bashevis Singer’, The Sewanee Review, 113 (2005): 332-337 - Elizabeth Brown-Guillory, ‘Ntozake Shange: A Cultural War Correspondent—an Interview.” CLA Journal (2019): 111-131 Week 3: Essays on the Borders of Language (1980s-1990s) Lecture Wednesday 26 November Seminars Friday 28 November Set Literary Reading: - Etel Adnan, ‘To Write in a Foreign Language’ (first published in 1984 or 1989) - Gloria Anzaldúa, ‘The Homeland, Aztlán: El otro México’, ‘How to Tame a Wild Tongue’, and ‘Tlilli, Tlapalli: The Path of the Red and Black Ink’ (first published in 1987) - Astrid Roemer, ‘In Search of My Own Voice’ (dated 1995, first published in 1997) Recommended Reading: - Jennifer Scappettone, ‘“Fog is My Land”: A Citizenship of Mutual Estrangement in the Painted Books of Etel Adnan’, in Reading Experimental Writing, ed. by Georgina Colby (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), pp. 15-50 - Azade Seyhan, ‘At Different Borders/On Common Grounds’, in Writing Outside the Nation (Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 116-145 - Yra van Dijk and Ghanima Kowsoleea, ‘A Central Voice in Caribbean Literature: Media and Memory in the Novels of Astrid Roemer’, NWIG: New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 96 (2022): 29–54. Week 4: Poetry of Exile (1990s-2000s) Lecture Wednesday 3 December Seminars Friday 5 December Set Literary Reading: - Mahmoud Darwish, poems from The Butterfly’s Burden (first published between 1998 and 2003, translated from Arabic) Set Academic Reading: - Refqa Abu-Remaileh, ‘Country of Words: Palestinian Literature in the Digital Age of the Refugee’ (2021) - Also explore Abu-Remaileh’s literary maps interactively at https://countryofwords.org/ (2023) Recommended Reading: - Charlotte Salmi, ‘“A Necessary Forgetfulness of the Memory of Place”: Mahmoud Darwish’s Poetry of No Return’, Interventions, 14 (2012): 55–68 - Edward Said, ‘Reflections of Exile’, Granta, 13 (1984), https://granta.com/reflections-on-exile/ Week 5: Anthologies of Belonging Across Contexts (2010s) Lecture Wednesday 10 December Seminars Friday 12 December Set Literary Reading: - excerpts from The Good Immigrant (first published in 2016): Nikesh Shukla, ‘Editor’s Note’ and ‘Namaste’ Vinay Patel, ‘Death is a Many-Headed Monster’ Musa Okwonga, ‘The Ungrateful Country’ - excerpts from The Good Immigrant USA (first published in 2019): Nikesh Shukla and Chimene Suleyman, ‘Editors’ Note’ Porochista Khakpour, ‘How to Write Iranian-America, or The Last Essay’ Chimene Suleyman, ‘On Being Kim Kardashian’ - excerpts from Your Homeland is Our Nightmare (first published in 2019, translated from German): Fatma Aydemir and Hengameh Yaghoobifarah, ‘Foreword to the Collection’ Sasha Marianna Salzmann, ‘Visible’ Deniz Utlu, ‘Trust’ Set Academic Reading: - Rehana Ahmed, ‘“We tick: Other”– race, religion, and literary solidarities in three essay anthologies and the neo-liberal marketplace’ (2023) Recommended Reading: - Saha and van Lente, ‘The Limits of Diversity: How Publishing Industries Make Race’, International Journal of Communication, 16 (2022): 1804-1822 (open access). - for those who can read Dutch: De Goede Immigrant, edited by Anousha Nzume, Ebissé Wakjira-Rouw and Mariam El Maslohui (Uitgeverij Pluim, 2020) Week 6 A Novel of ‘Postmigration’? (2020s) Lecture Wednesday 17 December Seminars Friday 19 December Set Literary Reading: - Mithu Sanyal, Identitti (first published in 2021, translated from German) Set Academic Reading: - Leila Essa, ‘Seen as Friendly, Seen as Frightening? A Conversation on Visibilities, Kinship and the Right Words with Mithu Sanyal’ (2024) Recommended Reading: - Anna Meera Gaonkar, Astrid Sophie Øst Hansen, Hans Christian Post, and Moritz Schramm, ‘Introduction’, in Postmigration: Art, Culture and Politics in Contemporary Europe (Transcript, 2021), pp. 11-42 - Sophie Schweiger, ‘Intertextual Identittis? Sanyal’s Ambiguous Acts of Appropriation’, Genealogy+Critique, 9 (2023): 1-21 After the break: in-person paper (see below) and end-of-course excursion (details to be confirmed)
November 5, 2025 at 3:51 PM
leilaessai.bsky.social
“I live inside my own heart, Matt Damon”
November 5, 2025 at 4:53 PM
leilaessai.bsky.social
prepping my first lecture for the Migration and Diaspora course next week and honestly cannot wait to teach my new syllabus
Weekly Overview 2025/26 All mandatory set reading is available in the course reader (except for the novel in Week 6). All optional recommended reading is available via the UU library or linked below. Week 1: Introduction Lecture Wednesday 12 November Seminars Friday 14 November Set Academic Reading: - Sara Ahmed, ‘Home and Away: Narratives of Migration and Estrangement’ (1999) - Anne Potjans, Anja Sunhyun Michaelsen, Elahe Haschemi Yekani, Thao Ho and Fenja Akinde-Hummel (research group Tales of the Diasporic Ordinary), ‘A Conversation on Diaspora’ (2024) Recommended Reading: - Paul Gilroy, ‘Diaspora’, Paragraph 17 (1994): 207-212 - Michel Bruneau, ‘Diasporas, transnational spaces and communities’ in Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories and Methods, ed. by Rainer Bauböck and Thomas Faist (Amsterdam University Press, 2010), pp. 35-49 Week 2: Short Stories of Displacement (1950s-1980s) Lecture Wednesday 19 November Seminars Friday 21 November Set Literary Reading: - Saadat Hasan Manto, ‘Toba Tek Singh’ (first published in 1955, translated from Urdu) - Samira Azzam, ‘Another Year’ (first published around the 1950s or 60s, translated from Arabic) - Isaac Bashevis Singer, ‘The Letter Writer’ (first published in 1968, translated from Yiddish) - Ntozake Shange, ‘aw, babee, you so pretty’ (first published around the 1970s or 80s) Recommended Reading: - Leslie A. Flemming, ‘Riots and Refugees: The Post-Partiton Stories of Saadat Hasan Manto’, Journal of South Asian Literature, 13 (1977): 99–109 - Yasir Suleiman, ‘Palestine and the Palestinians in the Short Stories of Samira Azzam’, Journal of Arabic Literature, 22 (1991): 154-165 - Leonard Kriegel, ‘This World and That Shtetl: The Short Fiction of Isaac Bashevis Singer’, The Sewanee Review, 113 (2005): 332-337 - Elizabeth Brown-Guillory, ‘Ntozake Shange: A Cultural War Correspondent—an Interview.” CLA Journal (2019): 111-131 Week 3: Essays on the Borders of Language (1980s-1990s) Lecture Wednesday 26 November Seminars Friday 28 November Set Literary Reading: - Etel Adnan, ‘To Write in a Foreign Language’ (first published in 1984 or 1989) - Gloria Anzaldúa, ‘The Homeland, Aztlán: El otro México’, ‘How to Tame a Wild Tongue’, and ‘Tlilli, Tlapalli: The Path of the Red and Black Ink’ (first published in 1987) - Astrid Roemer, ‘In Search of My Own Voice’ (dated 1995, first published in 1997) Recommended Reading: - Jennifer Scappettone, ‘“Fog is My Land”: A Citizenship of Mutual Estrangement in the Painted Books of Etel Adnan’, in Reading Experimental Writing, ed. by Georgina Colby (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), pp. 15-50 - Azade Seyhan, ‘At Different Borders/On Common Grounds’, in Writing Outside the Nation (Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 116-145 - Yra van Dijk and Ghanima Kowsoleea, ‘A Central Voice in Caribbean Literature: Media and Memory in the Novels of Astrid Roemer’, NWIG: New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 96 (2022): 29–54. Week 4: Poetry of Exile (1990s-2000s) Lecture Wednesday 3 December Seminars Friday 5 December Set Literary Reading: - Mahmoud Darwish, poems from The Butterfly’s Burden (first published between 1998 and 2003, translated from Arabic) Set Academic Reading: - Refqa Abu-Remaileh, ‘Country of Words: Palestinian Literature in the Digital Age of the Refugee’ (2021) - Also explore Abu-Remaileh’s literary maps interactively at https://countryofwords.org/ (2023) Recommended Reading: - Charlotte Salmi, ‘“A Necessary Forgetfulness of the Memory of Place”: Mahmoud Darwish’s Poetry of No Return’, Interventions, 14 (2012): 55–68 - Edward Said, ‘Reflections of Exile’, Granta, 13 (1984), https://granta.com/reflections-on-exile/ Week 5: Anthologies of Belonging Across Contexts (2010s) Lecture Wednesday 10 December Seminars Friday 12 December Set Literary Reading: - excerpts from The Good Immigrant (first published in 2016): Nikesh Shukla, ‘Editor’s Note’ and ‘Namaste’ Vinay Patel, ‘Death is a Many-Headed Monster’ Musa Okwonga, ‘The Ungrateful Country’ - excerpts from The Good Immigrant USA (first published in 2019): Nikesh Shukla and Chimene Suleyman, ‘Editors’ Note’ Porochista Khakpour, ‘How to Write Iranian-America, or The Last Essay’ Chimene Suleyman, ‘On Being Kim Kardashian’ - excerpts from Your Homeland is Our Nightmare (first published in 2019, translated from German): Fatma Aydemir and Hengameh Yaghoobifarah, ‘Foreword to the Collection’ Sasha Marianna Salzmann, ‘Visible’ Deniz Utlu, ‘Trust’ Set Academic Reading: - Rehana Ahmed, ‘“We tick: Other”– race, religion, and literary solidarities in three essay anthologies and the neo-liberal marketplace’ (2023) Recommended Reading: - Saha and van Lente, ‘The Limits of Diversity: How Publishing Industries Make Race’, International Journal of Communication, 16 (2022): 1804-1822 (open access). - for those who can read Dutch: De Goede Immigrant, edited by Anousha Nzume, Ebissé Wakjira-Rouw and Mariam El Maslohui (Uitgeverij Pluim, 2020) Week 6 A Novel of ‘Postmigration’? (2020s) Lecture Wednesday 17 December Seminars Friday 19 December Set Literary Reading: - Mithu Sanyal, Identitti (first published in 2021, translated from German) Set Academic Reading: - Leila Essa, ‘Seen as Friendly, Seen as Frightening? A Conversation on Visibilities, Kinship and the Right Words with Mithu Sanyal’ (2024) Recommended Reading: - Anna Meera Gaonkar, Astrid Sophie Øst Hansen, Hans Christian Post, and Moritz Schramm, ‘Introduction’, in Postmigration: Art, Culture and Politics in Contemporary Europe (Transcript, 2021), pp. 11-42 - Sophie Schweiger, ‘Intertextual Identittis? Sanyal’s Ambiguous Acts of Appropriation’, Genealogy+Critique, 9 (2023): 1-21 After the break: in-person paper (see below) and end-of-course excursion (details to be confirmed)
November 5, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Reposted by Leila Essa
derek.bike
good morning specifically to the FBI agent who introduced Mamdani’s dad to Marx
guy said, “Do you like Marx?” I said, “I haven’t met him.” Guy said, “No, no, he’s dead.” “Wow, what happened?” “No, no, he died long ago.” I thought the guy Marx had just died. So then, “Why are you asking me if he died long ago?” “No, he wrote a lot. He wrote that poor people should not be poor.” I said, “Sounds amazing.” I’m giving you a sense of how naïve I was. After they left, I went to the library to look for Marx. So that was my introduction to Karl Marx. BS: The FBI. MM: The FBI. Then, of course, I took a class on Marx. Couldn’t just get Marx out of the library. But,
November 5, 2025 at 2:21 PM
leilaessai.bsky.social
one more sleep until the very best music festival - will i see any mutuals there? (counting on @jennyleetsch.bsky.social 🫡) leguesswho.com/lineup-explore
Line-up
leguesswho.com
November 5, 2025 at 2:27 PM
Reposted by Leila Essa
dokhtarekolni.bsky.social
dm me für das PDF ❤️🦕🌬️
leilaessai.bsky.social Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · 7d
"Du bläst [den Staub] von amerikanischen Stahlinseln im Persischen Golf als Halteplatz für ihre Flugzeuge, du bläst ihn von deutschen Bomben, Handfeuerwaffen und Spezialpanzern auf ihrem Weg nach Gaza City und Khan Younis," (2/3)
www.berliner-zeitung.de/kultur-vergn...
Von Staub und Dinosauriern: Dankrede von Maryam Aras zum Tucholsky-Preis
Die Autorin und Literaturkritikerin Maryam Aras wurde mit dem Kurt-Tucholsky-Preis für literarische Publizistik 2025 geehrt. Wir dokumentieren ihre in Berlin gehaltene Dankrede.
www.berliner-zeitung.de
November 5, 2025 at 12:46 PM
Reposted by Leila Essa
leilaessai.bsky.social
"du bläst ihn von emiratischen Drohnen und Maschinengewehren der Rapid-Support-Milizen in Südsudan. Du bläst auf die Ruinen von Rafah, und der Staub fliegt meterhoch, du kannst gar nichts erkennen vor lauter Staub." (3/3)
November 4, 2025 at 9:44 AM
Reposted by Leila Essa
leilaessai.bsky.social
"Du bläst [den Staub] von amerikanischen Stahlinseln im Persischen Golf als Halteplatz für ihre Flugzeuge, du bläst ihn von deutschen Bomben, Handfeuerwaffen und Spezialpanzern auf ihrem Weg nach Gaza City und Khan Younis," (2/3)
www.berliner-zeitung.de/kultur-vergn...
Von Staub und Dinosauriern: Dankrede von Maryam Aras zum Tucholsky-Preis
Die Autorin und Literaturkritikerin Maryam Aras wurde mit dem Kurt-Tucholsky-Preis für literarische Publizistik 2025 geehrt. Wir dokumentieren ihre in Berlin gehaltene Dankrede.
www.berliner-zeitung.de
November 4, 2025 at 9:44 AM
leilaessai.bsky.social
Quick new blog post on the work on the Kurt-Tucholsky-Preis, for which you can also read Maryam Aras' acceptance speech now - see next post! intervention.sites.uu.nl/2025/11/04/r... (1/3)
Rewarding political writing
I count myself very lucky that my time on this research project coincides with my appointment as a judge for the Kurt-Tucholsky-Preis for politically engaged writing in small forms – one of Germany's ...
intervention.sites.uu.nl
November 4, 2025 at 9:44 AM
Reposted by Leila Essa
lswisnom.bsky.social
Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching
November 3, 2025 at 10:04 AM
Reposted by Leila Essa
bachynski.bsky.social
“Selma van de Perre, a valiant Jewish secretary who during World War II covertly transported suitcases bulging with cash, seditious newsletters, identity cards and ration books to Dutch resistance agents, even penetrating Nazi headquarters in Paris, died on Oct. 20 in London. She was 103.”
Selma van de Perre, Dutch Jew Who Resisted Nazis, Dies at 103
www.nytimes.com
November 2, 2025 at 12:38 PM
Reposted by Leila Essa
leilaessai.bsky.social
I read this Darwish poem for the first time during my own BA and have these lines stuck in my head often:

’"I have a place on the ship"
"I have a share in life"
"And as for me,
I must catch the subway
I am late for memories
and for the saxophone lesson,
and my night is short"‘
leilaessai.bsky.social Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · 12d
Worth all my hours at the scanner!!
A photo of the opened course reader: Mahmoud Darwish’s poem “We Walk on the Bridge” in the original Arabic and in Fady Joudah’s English translation
October 31, 2025 at 9:22 AM
leilaessai.bsky.social
I read this Darwish poem for the first time during my own BA and have these lines stuck in my head often:

’"I have a place on the ship"
"I have a share in life"
"And as for me,
I must catch the subway
I am late for memories
and for the saxophone lesson,
and my night is short"‘
leilaessai.bsky.social Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · 12d
Worth all my hours at the scanner!!
A photo of the opened course reader: Mahmoud Darwish’s poem “We Walk on the Bridge” in the original Arabic and in Fady Joudah’s English translation
October 31, 2025 at 9:22 AM
Reposted by Leila Essa
leilaessai.bsky.social
Young poet Batool Abu Akleen has been evacuated from the ongoing genocide in Gaza and has arrived in Paris on 28 October. Please contribute to this fund for her monthly scholarship in France - every small donation helps: chuffed.org/project/1431...
Financer la licence de Batool Abu Akleen, poétesse gazaouie
(English below)
chuffed.org
October 30, 2025 at 7:03 AM
leilaessai.bsky.social
Wah it’s arrived and I’m actually so excited for teaching with a proper old-school course reader for the first time
Photo of a bound course reader for the course “Migration and Diaspora” at Utrecht University
October 30, 2025 at 5:23 PM
leilaessai.bsky.social
Young poet Batool Abu Akleen has been evacuated from the ongoing genocide in Gaza and has arrived in Paris on 28 October. Please contribute to this fund for her monthly scholarship in France - every small donation helps: chuffed.org/project/1431...
Financer la licence de Batool Abu Akleen, poétesse gazaouie
(English below)
chuffed.org
October 30, 2025 at 7:03 AM